Happy ever after tails

This week we would like to give way to an e-mail we received from Anna Cabrera of the Philippine Animal Welfare Society. Read on and let her fill you in on pet adoption, Philippine style.

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People told us we were crazy when we put up the PAWS Animal Rehabilitation Center or PARC, the country’s first animal shelter whose adoption procedures were patterned after animal shelters in the United States.

"Let me see if I got this right," a friend said. "You want to put up a shelter that will rehabilitate rescued askals and puskals and adopt them out to people. And you will actually charge people an adoption fee for them?"

The rescued dogs and cats will be fully rehabilitated, I explained. By the time they are put up for adoption, they would be physically healthy, spayed-neutered, with nice full coats and assessed OK to be house pets. And please refrain from calling them askals and pusakals because we are trying to send out a message that dogs and cats are not meant to be roaming on the streets but should have homes.

OK. So these, er, mongrels or native dogs and cats are left out in the streets. They’re a dime a dozen. What makes you think people will want to adopt them?

For the first year of PARC’s operations, we feared that doomsayers were right. What were we thinking? Adoption rates were at a dismal 7 percent for dogs and even less than 5 percent for cats. But our hardworking group of volunteers pressed on. We did our own marketing for our shelter animals, creating flyers for them, posting photos of them at coffee shops and veterinary clinics. Attaching descriptions such as "loves to sit on people’s laps, always frisky and ready to play" to the photos of seemingly-generic native dogs and cats.

Soon, word-of-mouth and the growing media exposure on our shelter animals were beginning to bear fruit. What had seemed as mission impossible then were now real, hope-bolstering stories of "forever homes" for animals who were once unwanted and unloved.

Mokka: From The Dog House To The Catwalk

Mokka was the smallest of three abandoned terriers at the shelter. All three were barking furiously at everyone from the small steel cage. Ann Fernandez dropped by the shelter to do her usual weekend volunteer work for PAWS when she found herself inexplicably drawn to the smallest of the yip-yapping terriers who were abandoned at the shelter. The smallest one seemed barking more out of terror than anything else. Like her two brothers, her coat had a dull color to it and the fur was thin and slightly matted.

By virtue of her being an outstanding PAWS volunteer, Ann was able to take home the noisy little dog without the usual adoption interview. Still, her family wondered if she had made the right choice in adopting yet another rescued dog especially since this new one seemed hell-bent on chewing off the fingers of any one who wanted to pet her. Only Ann could touch her and carry her.

But Ann’s patience with Mokka soon paid off. One day, she surprised Ann by actually showing trust and friendliness towards the other volunteers in the shelter when Ann brought Mokka for a visit.

When people complain that we only have purebred dogs modeling for our fundraising fashion show, they find it hard to believe that this terrier of mixed breed and lineage who walks proudly on the catwalk with Ann was once a scruffy-looking frightened little ball of fur who was abandoned at the shelter.

The Kittens Julio And Suzie

"Hay, babaha na naman mamaya," A volunteer remarked to me when they heard Elizabeth was coming to the shelter to check on the kittens she fostered for PAWS.

The reason for the impending flood was the fact that Elizabeth would cry and cry whenever she would see her fostered ones still in the cattery. She adopted one of the kittens but couldn’t adopt them all, and the fact that they were still there after several weeks was depressing for a foster mom.

Fostering involved bottle-feeding unweaned puppies and kittens and bringing them back to the shelter when they were old enough to eat solid food. Heartbreaking for every foster mom is the fact that kittens brought back to PARC could contract some contagious disease if the animal was still unadopted for a long period of time.

But luck seemed to smile on Elizabeth’s kittens; three out of four have been sent to good homes in the weeks following her last tearful visit.

One of them was picked by Malyn Candelaria because he loved to lick the fingers of anyone who tried to pet him through the cage. Malyn’s kids loved him at first sight and decided to name him Garfield. Garfield goes with us everywhere "even to the beach," Malyn proudly reported to us. Her kids Paula (10 years old) and Pauline (9 years old) have learned to wash Garfield’s paws with gentle soap and water when they get too dusty. At bedtime, Garfield chooses to stay with Christian (aged 11), and wraps himself around Christian’s head as they sleep.

Suzie was another one of Elizabeth’s kittens. The letter went on to explain that Suzie/Lucky got all her vaccinations and had recovered already from a serious liver disease, which was the reason why he was not so friendly towards Axell when he first saw him at the shelter. Axell reports that Lucky is now having a good time in his new home.

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Visit the PAWS Animal Rehabilitation Center at Barangka, Marikina. A map to PARC is available at www.paws.org.ph or e-mail philpaws@yahoo.com for more details on animal adoptions or volunteering for the A-TEAM.